Tag Archives: EQ

So often times it happens that we live our lives in chains and we never even know we have the key.

The Eagles, “Already Gone”

I have been developing a theory that explains our human experience as the consilience of four distinct threads of intelligence, in what I name Quadratic Intelligence. While the threads themselves were identified long before I got to the drawing board, the quadratic model is my own innovation.

My preferred way of reading the model is organic, starting from the most primitive thread and proceeding along their evolutionary line of development until the full set is in view. Thus we begin in visceral intelligence (VQ), grow into emotional intelligence (EQ), articulate and expand rational intelligence (RQ; the conventional ‘IQ’), and at last awaken to the higher virtues of spiritual intelligence (SQ).

It’s important to understand that the four threads are not stacked on top of each other, but rather together comprise the braid of quadratic intelligence. There is a hierarchy among them nonetheless, with higher/later threads dependent upon the integrity of deeper/earlier ones. This same evolutionary sequence can be observed more broadly in the “tree” of animal life on earth: rooted in instinct (VQ), branching into feeling (EQ), flowering in thought (RQ), and bearing fruit in wisdom (SQ).

My model provides a useful way of representing the ideal of ‘self-actualization’ across the species and especially in our own.

As illustrated in my diagram, each thread of intelligence has its own focus and aim. Visceral health, emotional happiness, rational meaning, and spiritual well-being name these four ‘driving aims’ in humans, none of which can be neglected or removed without serious consequences to our overall quality of life.

Once again, each emerges out of and weaves strength back into the braid – although it is possible for the braid to get ‘knotted up’ in places, creating complications and dysfunctions throughout the system. My interest in the present post is to elucidate a particular kind of tangle among the threads of quadratic intelligence, in the formation of convictions.

My returning reader is likely acquainted with my working definition of conviction, as a belief that has taken the mind hostage and prevents it from thinking “outside the box.” It’s helpful to picture an otherwise curious, creative, and perfectly capable mind caught like a prisoner in a cage: a convict of its own conviction.

In my diagram I have placed the graphic of a cage at the threshold between our emotional and rational strands of intelligence, in order to represent the composition of conviction. It possesses a rational element, insofar as it is a meaningful proposition about something. It is logical, if not necessarily reasonable. It makes sense, even if it’s not very sensible. Other minds can understand what it means, although it may be completely without basis in reality or actual experience.

The reason we hold convictions – or rather I should say the reason our convictions hold us – really has little or nothing to do with their rational character as meaningful propositions. It’s from deeper down in the structure of intelligence that convictions draw their energy, in that all or nothing, black or white, one and only way commitment we make to them emotionally.

Whereas an otherwise reasonable proposition of opinion or fact remains open for verification because we are letting rational curiosity move us closer to reality, a conviction closes our mind off from reality in recital and defense of what must be true regardless.

In one way or another, every conviction is a passionate insistence on the conditions of our happiness – that we can’t be happy without this or that in our life, unless it is for us exactly what we need it to be, or not until some future time when our demands have been fully met. Partly out of ignorance and partly by deceit, we will often argue and fight for the truth of our claim without admitting our underlying unhappiness and desperate need to be right.

An all-or-nothing, black-or-white, one-and-only-way manner of thinking (RQ), therefore, is merely a rationalization of our unresolved emotional insecurity (EQ). We need to feel less vulnerable and exposed, so we insist that something or someone, somewhere or upon some future day, will make our insecurity go away for good.

Conviction, in other words, is perhaps the most obvious symptom of our chronic unhappiness.

If this wasn’t tragic enough – since nothing outside us, anywhere, can deliver on our demands and truly make us happy – the tangled knot of strong convictions further prevents the fruiting of our spiritual intelligence (SQ). Not only is energy tied up in forging those cages of belief, but it is siphoned away from the deeper insights and higher aspirations that would support our genuine well-being.

To understand these deeper insights and higher aspirations, we can take the two roots of our word “well-being” and follow each in a different direction. Well derives from the root meaning “whole,” so I’ll name that set our holistic aspirations for wholeness, harmony, unity, and fulfillment (as in “filled full”).

Our holistic aspirations open us to the revelation that All is One, and that the present mystery of reality lies beyond the meanings we construct and drape in front of it.

Being is the present participle of the verb “to be,” so I’ll name this second set our existential insights into presence, release, emptiness, and serenity. Our existential insights invite us into a deeper experience of the grounding mystery which is be-ing itself, and into the profound realization (or disillusionment depending on how difficult it is for us to let go) that our own identity is also but a construct without substance.

As we consider the existential insights and holistic aspirations of spiritual intelligence, an interesting paradox is revealed particularly in that curious juxtaposition of emptiness and fulfillment. From the perspective of ego this paradox appears as a self-canceling opposition or meaningless contradiction, for how can we experience emptiness and fulfillment at the same time?

But of course, this apparent dualism is only a function of ego consciousness itself, separated from reality by the convictions that simultaneously give us refuge and hold us captive.

As the spiritual wisdom traditions have been reminding us, all we need to do is drop the illusion and stop pretending, and this truth alone will set us free.

When our spiritual intelligence (SQ) is awakened we also become healthier (VQ), happier (EQ), and live more meaningful (RQ) lives. The good news is that, while we may struggle and suffer for a long time inside our small cages of conviction, the key to liberation is already in our possession.

Human beings are creatures of nature. Our physiology and complex nervous system are products of the evolution of life on planet Earth, and the roots of our genetic code are entwined with countless other life-forms. Some mythological accounts notwithstanding, our species evolved over many millions of years and we are utterly dependent on the web of life which is our home.

Human beings are also creators of culture. Our advanced brain and nervous system have endowed us with exceptional social, cognitive, and artistic abilities by which we have erected a profoundly complex habitat of meaning – symbols, language, architecture, technology, commerce, and worldviews. Culture wasn’t here before we arrived, but emerged gradually as this creative synergy continued to evolve. As distinct from the web of life mentioned earlier, culture is the web of meaning that we humans spin out of our minds and then take up residence within.

In the long run of our evolution, then, we were first creatures (and still are) and over time became creators. The more invested and involved we became in the production of culture, the more we tended also to lose our sense of membership in, and responsibility to, the natural realm. On the big-picture scale of things, the reality of our living body and its provident environment is the grounding mystery out of which mind has emerged to construct a home and contemplate the turning mystery of the cosmos.

As beings we are expressions of being-itself; as human beings we are privileged to look out on the wonder of existence and participate in the great community of life.

In my diagram, a diagonal arrow ascends from the bottom-left signifying our evolutionary path toward self-actualization, by which I mean the activation-into-maturity of our full capacity as a species. As Alan Watts often said, just as an apple tree “apples,” so our planet (and the universe itself) “peoples.” Each of us is a late-arriving manifestation of the universal process, the cosmos both looking out on its own Great Body and looking into its own Deep Soul through the intelligence that we are.

I have elsewhere associated these two lenses of human intelligence – one looking out and the other looking within – as science and spirituality, respectively. For millenniums they have mutually confirmed our intuition that All is One and that We’re All in This Together.

This, I would say, is the prime discovery of our species, and all of our most important endeavors are in one way or another searching out, pondering on, and celebrating what it means. Instinct keeps us rooted in the life-force, Tradition conserves our identity and way of life, Innovation presses us into new possibilities, and Wisdom invites us to higher wholeness – or, as the times demand, it also warns us against damaging the whole and thereby foreclosing on our future.

The long course of our evolution stretches from survival to well-being, from self-preservation to self-actualization, and our challenge has been to hold these very different value systems in balance.

In my diagram again, “nature” and “culture” are depicted as comprising a color gradient between them. Across my many blog posts and graphics, black represents the animal nature of our body, purple represents the higher self of our soul, and the orange in between them stands for our inner child, ego consciousness, and personal identity – depending on the context of consideration. It is in this ‘orange zone’ that we get hung up, held back, pushed down or pulled apart by the various neuroses of insecurity.

All of the great spiritual teachings share a suspicion against this nervous bundle of personal identity, as somehow the culprit responsible for our chronic suffering, strained relationships, intertribal violence, and life-degrading consumerism.

It is this cult of personal identity, centered around our altar to ego, that gets us so self-involved that we forget our essential nature as fellow creatures (siblings not masters) and world creators (artisans not shoppers). In the effort of managing our insecurity we cling to what (and to whom) we expect will make us feel better, but only really manage to entangle ourselves in these attachments and magnify our misery. For that we take medications, throw ourselves into distractions, or maybe sell our soul to some form of bigoted dogmatism.

What we can’t understand – and likely couldn’t accept even if we did understand – is that ego cannot be liberated. “I” am a prisoner of what defines me, as my identity is inextricably tied to those trappings of tribe, nation, ideology and ambition that make me who I am. In order to advance along the path of self-actualization to fulfillment and genuine well-being, this neurotic little tightwad must completely unwind, dying to its own seed-form (as Jesus taught) or dropping the illusion of its separate self (as the Buddha taught) for the sake of a larger and fuller experience of life.

Oftentimes, even when this shining truth is glimpsed, it has been immediately corrupted into a program for saving the ego rather than moving beyond it.

I don’t mean to suggest that we should aspire to a life without identity, devoid of ego, and utterly detached inside some metaphysical bubble of bliss. That, too, is a gross misunderstanding and corruption of the shining truth, one that often leads into a labyrinth of esoteric nonsense and kitsch religion, lacking all relevance to daily life. To repeat, our challenge is neither to glorify the ego nor to pretend it doesn’t exist, but rather to rise above and move beyond its self-centered vantage on reality; to step through the curtain and rejoin the universe, already 14 billion years underway.

In my diagram are also represented the four strands of our Quadratic Intelligence – visceral (VQ: needs), emotional (EQ: feelings), rational (RQ: thoughts), and spiritual (SQ: intuitions). Even though I don’t focus on them explicitly in this post, they are included to provide some cross-reference for my returning reader. Go here for a deeper dig into Quadratic Intelligence. You can also search “quadratic intelligence” for additional posts on the topic.

The psychologist Charles Tart coined the term consensus trance in reference to the shared assumptions and agreements that hold social organizations inside the rules of groupthink (Irving Janus, 1972). As an aspect of what he named a consensus reality orientation (CRO), it reflects the tendency we all have in adjusting our perspective and aspirations to what ‘the rest of us’ believe is valid or plausible.

Why do we so quickly dismiss insights and ideals that others in our relational webs don’t understand or approve? Granted, there is an obvious benefit to all involved (including us) when some of our harebrained ideas and odd inclinations are not adopted by the group. What a very strange world it would be if everything we conjured up in our daydreams and private thoughts automatically became coin of the realm.

But in this case I’m thinking more about those times when a truly winning notion dawns in our minds or a genuine discovery with transformative potential turns up in meditation – and we get punished, scolded, or shushed. It might even be something so noble as a desire to engage our relationships with greater mindfulness and honest love, but our different energy disturbs the routine and upsets expectations.

Individuals who are caught inside a consensus trance prefer the predictability of those routines. The definition of reality that everyone accepts, albeit unthinkingly, provides an enclosure where they feel secure. Even if (mind you) those routines actually perpetuate conflict and suffering, this familiarity makes them preferable to the insecurity of not knowing what to expect.

A quick review of what I presented in my most recent post will help us better understand how consensus trances get to be such compelling forces in our lives. We come into existence as infants kept alive by virtue of a visceral intelligence (VQ) operating autonomically below conscious awareness or control. This particular strand of our quadratic intelligence has but one overriding mandate: to keep our body alive. It manages the metabolic process of converting external resources (e.g., oxygen, food and water) into its own animal energy, and then converting this energy by an aerobic process into adaptive behavior. Key words in identifying our VQ’s driving preoccupation are security and control.

Our early years are really at the mercy of the family system into which we are born. Since no family or single caretaker is perfect – and can’t be expected to be, nor faulted for not being so – we all carry a bit of anxiety in our nervous system (the special province of VQ). This is simply because our survival and safety needs could not be promptly satisfied the instant their urgency declared itself. Such anxiety is another name for insecurity, registered as the default setting of our resting mood and positioned somewhere between mild apprehension and frazzled hypervigilance. In the emergence of religion, our insecurity is likely what motivated those earliest ritual petitions to a provident reality.

As emotional intelligence takes its cue and starts opening up to our surrounding conditions, this deep insecurity seeks compensation through relationship with what D.W. Winnicott called “transitional objects.” Not only cuddle blankets and pacifiers, but even our primary caregivers were pressed into service. By attaching ourselves to these things we had the inarticulate expectation that they would calm us down by making us feel safe, loved, and perfectly content. Key words in identifying our EQ’s driving preoccupation, then, are attachment and belonging. Mommy and Binky were attachments, and we belonged together.

As time went on, this EQ dynamic of attachment and belonging got translated farther out into the world of peer groups, romantic partners, social classes, political parties, and organized religions.

A bit delayed but coming to play as we acquired a code system of words (e.g., dog), schemas (dog-bone), and stories (the dog buried the bone), rational intelligence (RQ) began constructing a worldview that could orient and connect us to a more complex reality. While we learned many words and heard many stories (even made up some of our own), certain words and stories were weighted with special significance by our taller powers – who, after all, were in control and had authority to decide whether or not to deliver on our emotional need to belong.

Very naturally, our personal worldview became a constructed copy of theirs. Together we looked from inside our tribal system and out upon a reality that we could name, impose with our values, and claim to know. Key words in identifying RQ’s driving preoccupation are meaning and knowledge, making sense of it all by fitting reality into our logical boxes and mental frames. Step into any social system, from nuclear families to global cultures, and pretty soon you’ll start to get a picture of how its members construct meaning and certify knowledge – and, if you pay especially close attention, how they steer the mind away from discrepant views.

From that fairly brief description of the process whereby individuals develop their sense of self and reality, only a slight sideways step will land us deep in the tangle of a consensus trance.

Close-minded worldviews (RQ) envelop and safeguard passionate attachments (EQ), which in turn compensate for a profound and chronic insecurity in the individual nervous systems (VQ) involved. Indeed, a deeper and more severe anxiety (insecurity) corresponds to – we can confidently say it will inevitably produce – absolute convictions which members are willing to defend at all cost. (I say ‘willing’, but the psychological fact is that they lack the freedom and authority to choose otherwise.)

The upward sweeping arc of an orange arrow in my diagram traces our developing sense of self and reality as it comes to pivot around a separate center of personal identity named ego. Ego occupies a central position within the web of relationships that defines its tribe. Instead of regretting its arrival on the scene – which is actually a slow-and-steady construction process – and making ego the source of all our problems in the world today, we need to draw a critical distinction between a healthy ego (possessing the virtues of ego strength) and a neurotic ego. The latter is what conspires in the consensus trance.

A neurotic ego is profoundly insecure, codependently attached, and a fiercely defensive convict of those beliefs (aka convictions) shared in common with its equally neurotic alter (other) egos. In this condition and fully entranced, egos play out the scripts they inherited (codependency scripts are commonly transgenerational) or picked up in the urgency of staying in the game. Thankfully the trance condition that we regard as ‘normal’ or ‘ordinary consciousness’ is not so neurotic and even possesses sufficient strength so as to allow for the possibility of breaking-through, or what is referred to across the wisdom traditions as ‘waking up’ or simply ‘awakening’.

In my diagram this breakthrough is represented at two points, one below (or deeper within) the self, and the other above (or farther beyond) the self. I have elsewhere distinguished these two points and the paths they open up as the ‘mystical turn’ (releasing self to the grounding mystery) and the ‘ethical turn’ (including self in the universal order), respectively. Because the mystical turn (at least as I’m characterizing it) engages in meditation practices that assist awareness in sinking into its visceral center of power, the grounding mystery can be identified as ‘the power within’. At the other end, an ethical turn elevates awareness into its rational center of truth and inspires a radical reconsideration of morality (how we should live) in view of ‘the truth beyond’ our self-serving values.

The benefits of such practice and reconsideration should be obvious. By breaking through to life outside the consensus trance we can free ourselves from the spiritual stupor of ordinary consciousness, going on to enjoy the flow of a fully functioning quadratic intelligence. In short, we can finally become fully human.

But then … we need to go back in there! My next post will be about the challenge of staying awake and living creatively inside the webs of relationship we call our individual worlds.

While all the other creatures on this planet, so far as we know, develop their full potential and achieve ‘self-actualization’ in a single lifetime (given the opportunity and provident conditions), only we human beings have managed to undermine our own evolutionary progress. Why and how we do this has been a fascination of mine for some time, and over the years a theory has come together that offers an explanation. While many of the elements aren’t necessarily original with me, the unifying system is something that brings together and breaks through the limitations of other approaches.

Not surprisingly I have come with another diagram, and my returning reader will recognize all the component features from previous posts. What’s new here is not so much in the details as in the gestalt, in the whole picture of things apprehended all at once. You’ll find the familiar color codes associated with our four strands of quadratic intelligence – black for our visceral intelligence (VQ), red for emotional intelligence (EQ), blue for our rational intelligence (RQ), and purple for spiritual intelligence (SQ) – along with orange which signifies the dynamics of personal identity, or ego.

The four types of intelligence are arranged in a manner that reflects the developmental sequence in which they come online and start making significant contributions to our sense of self and reality. We begin at the bottom with the autonomic functions of visceral intelligence; open up very early to emotional engagement with our taller powers (caregivers, guardians, and teachers), siblings and playmates; and around age ten come into our rational faculty with its skills in logic, critical thinking, and conceptualization.

Even though it’s frequently in adulthood that individuals awaken to their spiritual intelligence, you’ll notice that I’ve positioned it in a way that transects the other three (instead of stacking on top). This is meant to suggest that while it certainly has (or can have) a profound influence on our sense of self and reality from very early on, the most important work of spiritual intelligence must await that crucial stage when our separate center of personal identity (ego) is strong enough to be transcended – not renounced, dismissed, or canceled out, but surpassed. Without sufficient ego strength, consciousness is unable to break past the neurotic self-preoccupation that compels us to grip down on ‘me and mine’.

Now that we’re on the ego, let’s take a moment to work out some of those details. I take the view which regards personal identity – this ego who is the center of self-esteem, world perspective, and moral agency – as a social construct and not an entity in the proper sense. Through discipline and instruction the tribe shapes our identity to be compatible (and compliant) with its shared beliefs and way of life. The nature of this shaping process anticipates and responds to the activation sequence of our quadratic intelligence.

Referring back to my diagram, you’ll see that I’ve placed key themes and concerns at each level corresponding to the developmental phases when they are dominant. Thus, in the earliest phase our visceral intelligence is dominant, making security, power, and control primary concerns that shape our deepest (preverbal) impressions of self and reality. Because even the most perfect family system cannot deliver instantaneously on our every need, we all carry some insecurity within ourselves, which we mitigate by attaching to whomever or whatever can calm us down. Attachment, love, and belonging come to overlay (and compensate for) those deeper concerns, continuing the process of our personification (or becoming a person).

By the time rational intelligence is ready to come online a lot has happened down below, in the calibration of our nervous system (VQ) and the adaptation of a relational style (EQ). We become better able to articulate the world that’s been forming around us and the perspective opening up from where we stand. Meaning, truth, and knowledge matter now to us as never before. It’s important to remember that the self-world construct – ‘who I am and what’s around me’ – is part of a social role-play, a cultural pretense of the highest magnitude that has been (not wrongfully) labeled by some, like the Buddha, as a delusion that holds our true nature under a spell, the so-called consensus trance.

Trances are all the more seductive according to the depth of our insecurity and the magnetism of attachment that we hope will compensate for it. In fact, the rational requirement for a coherent and reality-oriented philosophy of existence is all too quickly relinquished for the sake of maintaining membership in a club, class, or cult that promises to keep us safe inside the fold. This is when beliefs once held by the mind come to hold the mind captive (as a convict) to convictions that are placed beyond doubt, beyond question – beyond the probe of reasonable inquiry.

And there we have a picture of where most of us daily live: professing and defending a worldview (meaning) that protects the codependent relationships (attachment) which help us manage the profound (deep and ineffable) insecurity registered in our nervous system. With respect to that, spiritual intelligence stands little chance of awakening. If anything, its mystical intimations and transpersonal longings will be translated into doctrines of supernatural realities and afterlife destinies. Tragically many individuals today are trapped inside long-outdated (irrelevant) orthodoxies, for the sake of which they will sacrifice everything – rationality, property, fulfillment, and life itself – their own and that of ‘the enemy’.

But I can’t leave it there, with the majority caught in their convictions and the planet teetering on the brink of mass extinction. A few of us are fortunate enough, thanks to supportive families, open-minded and generous communities, our own dogged persistence toward an authentic life, and to the sheer grace of resources and opportunities made available in the moment, to arrive with sufficient ego strength that enables us to break through the self-world construct of personal identity. We don’t beat ourselves down as damned, helpless rejects, but simply let go of who we think we are, relaxing into the grounding mystery of being itself and rising into our creative authority among the countless beings that share (and manifest) this universe together with us.

When this happens – and I’m not one who believes it happens once and forever, but is rather a mode of experience that awaits our readiness to let go and our willingness to make the leap – an alignment of power, love, and truth opens us to the reality beyond ourselves. This is when ‘flow’ happens, when what we call the human spirit pulls deep on its faith in existence and reaches out to the wisdom of a universal order, where All is One.

Each of us is rooted in an unfathomable mystery and participates, whether aware or ignorant, in the turning unity of all things.

In fifth-century BCE Athens, the birthplace of Western democracy, the political scene was an ongoing contest between the ‘rule of a few’ (oligarchy) and the ‘power of the people’ (democracy). By Plato’s time democracy had generated more problems than it could resolve, motivating the philosopher to reject it outright as a viable model for government. Its fatal flaw, in his opinion, was in the way it put ordinary people (demos) at the mercy of politicians whose deceptive rhetoric made them believe things that weren’t true, and vote on promises they had no intention of keeping.

Ordinary people – today we might refer to it as ‘popular psychology’ – don’t live their lives by the light of clear reason as much as they follow the inclination of their strongest passions. Without training and practice in logic, argument, and critical thinking, the average voter lacks the necessary skills for teasing apart sincerity and balderdash, straight truth and clever spin, the hard way through and the easy way out.

Why in the world would we risk the enterprise of government and the future of its citizens by surrendering our fate to the most persuasive stumper?

Plato himself was in favor of what he called the ‘philosopher king’, a monarchy ruled benevolently under the wise guidance of an enlightened leader. Apparently his low opinion of ordinary folk was offset by an equally idealistic fantasy of a fully self-actualized sovereign lord. Nevertheless a benevolent dictator would still be preferable to the rule of a few (oligarchy) from the wealthy class whose policies inevitably serve their own interests rather than those of the general citizenry.

Just because you are rich and enjoy high status doesn’t mean that you are also wise, altruistic, or even all that smart.

And yet, the American story is full of great rhetoric in the speeches and writings of individual men and women whose ideas (and promises) changed the course of history. Think of the politicians and rebels, the reformers and revolutionaries, the mavericks and visionaries, the anonymous tracts and famous authors who pictured alternative realities and challenged the orthodoxy of their day, in words that stirred ordinary people to accomplish great things.

Just because popular psychology is vulnerable to agitation, inspiration, and persuasion doesn’t necessarily mean that the rhetoric of democracy should be censored.

Politicians and other individuals seeking positions of influence in society will not stop using words and conjuring images with the purpose of moving their audiences into agreement with their visions and in support of their leadership. Every speech is a construction designed on the linguistic magic of manipulating feelings, beliefs, and motivations. The words themselves, of course, but also the tone, volume, and cadence of speech; repetitions, alliterations, and metaphorical associations; body posture, gestures, and facial expressions – all of it is fashioned and delivered to make an impact and provoke some kind of change in the audience.

Instead of censoring or (as Plato would have it) outlawing rhetorical flourishes from our political candidates, we might do better to understand what it is inside us, the audience and potential voters, that gets so quickly pulled in and taken along. In the best of all possible worlds our politicians would speak to our genuine needs and interests, to our deeper virtues and higher aspirations, rather than yanking our chains to support their agendas.

I propose that my theory of Quadratic Intelligence can shed light on this question about what ‘the people’ really want and need. Once we have some clarity on that score, we will be able to tell when a candidate is trying to take us for a ride or put us under a spell – preferably before the magic goes to work on us. My diagram above illustrates the four types of intelligence (hence quadratic) that have evolved as a system in each of us, connecting them to regions of the body where they seem to be centered. For a more in-depth discussion of each type, check out The Harmony of Intelligence, Quadratic Intelligence, and What’s Your QIP?

When politicians warn us that immigration is undermining our economy, how terrorists are conspiring inside our borders, and how our security as a nation is being compromised, they are speaking to our visceral intelligence (VQ). More accurately we should say that they are using words interpreted by our rational intelligence (RQ) for the purpose of provoking strong feelings in our emotional intelligence (EQ) so as to effect a change in our nervous system (VQ) that will move us to action.

Visceral intelligence is centered in our gut, which is why the politician’s warning is experienced as upset in our stomach and intestines. This is where the resources of our environment are converted into the energy our body needs to live. VQ monitors this balance and lets us know when we might be losing the safety and life support we require. Of the four intelligences, this one is the most primitive, and when it gets poked or yanked everything higher up gets put on standby until the crisis can be resolved. Because the body’s visceral intelligence has primacy in emergency situations, the politicians know that poking our need for security will get us to pay attention to their message.

For a majority of voters, perhaps, concerns over safety and survival are not as worrisome as the daily reminder that life just isn’t going their way. Our emotional intelligence (EQ) is more attuned to what’s happening around us, to the degree in which our circumstances are either open or closed to our pursuit of happiness. To define happiness as the feeling that things are going our way does not automatically make it a selfish pursuit. Things ‘go our way’ when our relationships are positive and supportive, when we are making progress toward our goals, and when our desires, on balance, are fulfilled more than they are frustrated.

One pernicious bit of rhetoric works to convince us that something is missing from our lives, that we can’t really be happy until the void is filled. Given that our happiness seems to rise and fall on the rhythms of pleasure and fortune, politicians can easily exploit our readiness to look outside ourselves for the key to lasting happiness. (Indeed, panhandlers and snake oil salesmen perfected this technique long ago.)

They bait us by ticking down a list of things that aren’t tipped in our favor and then ask, “How can you be happy, with all this going against you?”

By this time the charm is set and we have taken the hook. That’s right! we think to ourselves. How have I been managing without this person in office?

Plato was correct in his observation that ordinary people make most of their important decisions in life on the basis of how the options make them feel. In many cases our best interest would be better served if we could just detach ourselves from the passions and exercise a little more reason instead. This ability to detach, discriminate, critique, compare, analyze, extrapolate, and consider things from a more objective standpoint is made possible by our rational intelligence (RQ).

Frankly, rhetoric of any kind is less about convincing us through the logic of argument than it is about moving us emotionally in support of its conclusion.

Rational intelligence works out our need for meaning – that things and life make sense in the bigger picture and longer view. We shouldn’t be surprised if most of democracy’s rhetoric rarely attains this level of clear-thinking consideration. If the big picture is invoked at all, it will usually be in the interest of constructing a rational frame around an emotional or visceral issue. Cut back on emissions and develop clean energy technology because our coastal cities will be underwater within a decade if we don’t – that kind of thing.

But remember, your average voter doesn’t push levers or pencil in bubbles according to sound theory or even the evidence we have in hand. (Who conducted those studies anyway?)

If the rhetoric of democracy prefers to play closer to our animal urgencies and powerful moods than to the shining logic of higher reason, it hardly ever manages to touch the dimensions of our spiritual intelligence (SQ). This is probably due to the fact that most politicians and ordinary people fail even to acknowledge its presence, much less give it priority in their lives. Of course I’m not referring here to our religious affiliations, since religion can be as dissociated from spiritual intelligence as anything else we do – oddly enough, even actively repressing it in many cases.

Our spiritual intelligence makes it possible for us to break free of our personal perspective – that is to say, of the perspective on reality that is tied to our separate center of identity as egos – and re-enter the oneness of being. If this sounds like a bunch of metaphysical gobbledygook, we must know that our separate identity is merely a delusion of consciousness, a construct that exists only in the performance space of a role-play (society) where we hope one day to be somebody and make something of ourselves.

This is in fact the (insubstantial) part of us that politicians work to recruit for votes: the part that declares, “I AM a Republican” or “I AM a Democrat,” “I AM for this” and “I AM against that.”

When we break past the delusion of a separate identity, our spiritual intelligence opens consciousness to the grounding mystery within and to the sacred universe beyond. Ego drops away as awareness descends to its Source (what I call the mystical turn), whereas in going outward it is transcended in communion with the Whole (the ethical turn). We come to understand that we are manifestations of one reality, along with everything else, and together we belong to the same.

Taking full responsibility for our place in the greater community of life is what I mean by creative authority.

Rhetoric is simply the ability to use language effectively. It doesn’t have to be deceptive or biased or tied to a party platform. Indeed the “rhetoric of democracy” might be about using language to focus our longings and lift the human spirit, to inspire a greater love for each other and for our planetary home. And ultimately, perhaps, to awaken us to the fullness of what we are here to become.

I recently offered up the idea of our “quadratic intelligence,” of four distinct types of intelligence in us that open up and come online in developmental stages, each one engaging us with a dimension of reality. I pointed out how Western psychology and education theory have only recently come to realize that our earlier notion of an “intelligence quotient” (IQ) was really measuring only one of these types and not intelligence as a whole.

The ensuing scholarly “discovery” of emotional intelligence (EQ) and spiritual intelligence (SQ), of how both of these bring deeper support and expanded horizons to the rational intelligence so highly prized in our STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) culture, is challenging us to adjust our categories around what it means to “be intelligent.” In addition to these three types of intelligence, I suggested that we complete the set with a fourth: visceral intelligence (VQ), which is more or less equivalent to what we already know as the autonomic nervous system.

I took my reader for a quick ride up the channel, starting in the unconscious internal state of the body (VQ), connecting emotionally to the environment outside the body (EQ), parsing and classifying the object of experience into a rational system of meaning (RQ), and breaking out of this logical box into the spontaneous intuition of a higher wholeness (SQ). A successful breakthrough of spiritual intelligence to some extent depends on an equanimity of emotional and rational factors – not so engaged (EQ) or detached (RQ) that genuine transcendence is prevented.

In this post I want to clarify this theory further into its distinct modes of intention and how they work together in the full harmony of intelligence. “Mode” is derived from the root mod, which refers to a way, manner, form, or style in which something exists or behaves. I hope to show how our human way of being and manner of life grows more distinctively human as we ascend through the network of our four intelligences.

Visceral intelligence (VQ) represents a mode of intention that anchors consciousness in its deeper ground. The internal state of our nervous system seeks to hold the body in a dynamic equilibrium where an electro-chemical conspiracy of events sustains us in life. Out of this provident ground arises consciousness itself, which must preserve its anchor in the body, and through the body to the living earth.

A step up from the largely autonomic processes of our internal state brings us into emotional intelligence (EQ) where the mode is to engage with the environment around us. Emotional engagement begins very early in life and serves the function of connecting our internal state (VQ) to the realm outside the body, adjusting state as necessary and motivating behavior that is adaptive. Another derivation of mod is “mood,” referring to this matching of internal and external, internal state to external situation, in a generalized temperament that bridges the two realms.

From emotional intelligence we move into rational intelligence (RQ, formerly IQ) where the mode of intention shifts from engagement to detachment. Obviously this mode serves us well when our objective is to grasp something for what it is in itself rather than how it may be affecting us personally. Western science has perfected this modus operandi of detached observation in its experimental method, which has enabled us to take control of our environment in remarkable ways.

Our characteristically Western preference for rational operations over emotional feelings when it comes to what we believe we can really count on for a truthful experience of reality, has led to the unfortunate consequences of environmental degradation, inter-human violence, and neurotic disorders. We have become adept at constructing thought “models” – yet another term with roots in mod, involving our conceptual ability for abstract representation – as our emotional programs remain snagged in adolescence and early childhood.

The healthy balance of emotional and rational modes of intention is how I define equanimity – a high value in many wisdom traditions around the world. Importantly equanimity is not about suppressing or subtracting from our animal nature, but rather harmonizing its deeper impulses in a mode of conscious life where passion (EQ) and reason (RQ) complement and support each other. I would agree that equanimity is all too rare in society today, where part of ourselves seethes in raw emotion as the other part analyzes everything (literally) to death.

This is exactly where our widespread lack of “ego strength” (a related idea to equanimity) has us stuck: collapsing spontaneously into mental chaos (borderline personality), swinging wildly between emotional extremes (bipolar mood), and splitting into a variety of subpersonalities that contend for the seat of control (dissociative identity). Absent a secure center of self-conscious autonomy (ego), these inner demons take us over – especially when we are stressed, anxious, or frustrated, which is to say more and more of the time these days.

When I identify the intentional mode of spiritual intelligence with transcendence, I want to guard against any tendency to separate it from our embodied life. As I see it, it’s been a mistake of rationalism to represent the soul as metaphysically alien, existing apart from the body as its resident ghost. Transcendence, here, should not be interpreted as going beyond the body and leaving it behind. What we transcend are the rational constructs by which we define and classify reality, and believe one thing or another.

To grasp all at once the unified mystery of existence requires us to “go beyond” what we think we know. The tightly interlocked system of meaning that we spin around ourselves like a spider’s web may answer our needs for security, identity, and significance, but it also separates us from the present mystery of reality. This veil must be pulled aside for the sake of mystic communion with reality as such. It is in that higher mode of intention that we realize All is One.

If we had equanimity and ego strength, and were firmly anchored in the provident ground of life, the invitation of spirituality to step through the illusion of meaning and into oneness would be accepted with joy and celebration. The centerpiece of this illusion is our self-concept as separate and fully autonomous individuals, immortal beings on our way through to something better on the other side.

Back before the mid-twentieth century, educational psychologists grabbed hold of a notion that human intelligence could be measured. The so-called “intelligence quotient” was hailed as a way of diagnosing an individual’s intellectual aptitude; not just how smart he or she was but how capable the individual was of getting smart.

Inevitably, given the fact that Western science and psychology was riding the Cartesian-Newtonian wave of rationalism and the promise of mathematical reasoning (proving so successful in science, technology, and engineering), the IQ test favored operations of analysis, computation, logical abstraction, and problem solving.

Those who scored high on the IQ test were matched with better education (who wants to waste resources on just average or below-average abilities?), more opportunities, and higher paying jobs. After all, we need smart people running The Show, not mediocre intellects and irrational idiots who will certainly botch things up and send us all hurtling into oblivion. Parents would proudly publish the exceptional IQs of their children on bumper stickers and any chance they got.

In light of more recent discoveries and advances in psychology and neuroscience, I propose that the classical “IQ” be renamed “RQ,” for rational intelligence, since the category really only measures one type of intelligence and not intelligence overall.

In 1995 Daniel Goleman published a theory of “emotional intelligence,” which he claimed underlies these rational-mathematical operations with social and interpersonal competencies that orbit closer to the core of the self. Studies had been going on for some time, researching the benefits of emotion regulation in infants and young children.

These studies convincingly demonstrated the critical importance of emotional intelligence. Goleman made his case that emotional intelligence matters “even more” than IQ when it comes not only to academic success but to a general proficiency in life.

In the meantime, Goleman’s “EQ” (shorthand for emotional quotient) has slowly made its way into the conversation of education theory, resulting in some changes in how teachers teach, how students learn, where the curriculum can be improved, and why an “enriched” learning environment is essential to successful education. Despite these changes – and by no means have they been deep and systemic changes to the dominant paradigm – our schools continue to favor IQ over EQ when it comes down to rendering a diagnosis (called a grade) on individual intelligence.

Because I work in higher education, this whole topic fascinates me. I can see far-reaching implications for a broader notion of intelligence – if only education theorists, school administrators, and classroom instructors are willing to challenge long-standing assumptions. As change is often costly, a major challenge will be identifying new funding sources and resource channels. As far as changes to the public education system are concerned, because state legislatures typically under-support teacher salaries, school facilities, curriculum development, and technology updates, the changes we’re talking about are going to be hard-won.

In 2000 Danah Zohar and Ian Marshall published Spiritual Intelligence: The Ultimate Intelligence, which the authors argued adds a third dimension to the already recognized IQ and EQ. Spiritual intelligence (SQ) gives individuals the ability to transcend the emotional and logical constructs of meaning where our beliefs about reality are held, expanding awareness into higher (and deeper) dimensions of reality as well as creative possibility.

The authors carefully distinguished between spiritual intelligence and religious belief, explaining that while doctrines might be rational descriptions of an experience (i.e., a product of RQ), dogmatically holding and defending them can be evidence in fact that spiritual intelligence is not (or no longer) active.

Rational intelligence, even when balanced and enriched by emotional intelligence, can still be very much about short-term and proximate values, while spiritual intelligence opens awareness to the Big Picture and Long View where we can contemplate our existence and the consequences of our actions on a much larger scale.

Zohar and Marshall proposed that the addition of SQ to EQ and IQ made for a complete and comprehensive model of human intelligence. But something still seems to be missing. What about the autonomic nervous system, which is continuously regulating our body’s internal state and matching it to the ever-changing life situations unfolding around us? What about what we commonly call “gut responses” and our animal intuition? The drives and reflexes of instinct, though carrying on below the threshold of conscious intention or control, certainly represent a distinct type of intelligence.

Our visceral intelligence – what I’ll name VQ – is much deeper and more ancient than the three others. It manages our underlying mood, our rest and arousal, the tonal energy state of our internal organs, muscles, and skin. It is the survival and evolutionary intelligence of our animal nature.

Coming back to education, it is clear that the internal states of students and teachers – whether they are calm, present, and grounded, or agitated, anxious, or bored – will have predictable consequences on learning as it rises into conscious feelings (EQ) and articulate thoughts (RQ). Much of present-day education is focused on the transfer of rational knowledge and skills from experts (teachers) to novices (students), for the most part disregarding the quality of EQ rapport between both or the VQ internal state of each.

So let’s put it all together, in what we might call the “quadratic intelligence” of human beings (from quad, meaning four). Our greater system of intelligence, then, is four-dimensional, and each type (VQ, EQ, RQ, and SQ) engages us with reality in a unique and special way.

In the model above, a human brain is facing you, which means that the right and left hemispheres are opposite to yours. Popular theory identifies autonomic processes (VQ) with the brainstem, emotional feeling (EQ) with the “right brain,” and rational thinking (RQ) with the “left brain” – which isn’t altogether wrong, just too simplistic to be useful in any rigorous sense. Our brain is more a nested hierarchy of neural projections, circuits, and networks, having evolved through distinct stages of development represented in the brainstem (a “reptilian” stage), an outlying limbic system (the “old mammalian” stage), and a cerebral cortex with its distinct lobes of specialized processing.

My model suggests that EQ and RQ (which actually develop and come online in that order) are deeply reliant on VQ for the supportive internal state they need to function effectively. And, as Goleman says, since RQ is at its best when EQ is operating empathically underneath and alongside it, we are getting the sense that these first three intelligences are profoundly interdependent.

By telling stories and concocting theories (RQ) we can alter how we feel about ourselves and the world around us (EQ), effecting deep changes in our prevailing mood (VQ). On the balance, however, most of the time our passions (EQ) and reasons (RQ) are taking their cues from the energetic tone of our nervous state (VQ) and composing interpretations of reality that match it.

But where does spiritual intelligence (SQ) fit into the model? Should we simply follow the trajectory of development from VQ through EQ to RQ and assume that SQ is just a further extension of our rational intelligence? Since RQ is about organizing symbols in meaningful patterns, we might expect that SQ will capitalize on this propensity for constructing meaning and “talk about” spiritual (i.e., metaphysical) things like gods, souls, heaven and hell.

But not so.

SQ is positioned in my model between and above EQ and RQ, transcending both passion and reason to a point of higher awareness where a larger and longer horizon is beheld all at once. This is the perspective of wisdom. I agree wholeheartedly with Zohar and Marshall that spiritual intelligence is not to be identified with an individual’s religious commitment or theological fluency. Instead of getting tangled up with religiosity, SQ is what gives one the ability to see past our idols, myths, doctrines, and beliefs to the present mystery of reality (or Real Presence of Mystery).

By grounding us in being-itself – most immediately by a meditative practice of some kind that calms the body (VQ) and opens a clearing at the center of awareness – our spiritual intelligence enables us to rise above and break past the convictions that the religions frequently exploit to their advantage by compelling conversion, pushing membership, persuading donations, organizing crusades and justifying terrorist campaigns in God’s name.

We realize in an instant that All is One, that we’re in this together, that a shared and hopeful future ordains us with the responsibility of living for the good of the whole.